


As a treat

by strawberriesandtophats



Series: Cooking with dad [1]
Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Cooking, Domestic Fluff, Gen, Good Parent Din Djarin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:14:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23079931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawberriesandtophats/pseuds/strawberriesandtophats
Summary: In the beginning, he’d tried to give the kid a crumbly corner of the ration bar, which the kid had responded to as if he was a fine lady who’d been handed a very dead and very stinky roadkill and asked to eat it.
Relationships: Baby Yoda & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)
Series: Cooking with dad [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2077101
Comments: 26
Kudos: 239





	As a treat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MadHatter13](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadHatter13/gifts).



Kids had to eat.

Din could get by on ration bars and filtered water, especially if he’d managed to get himself a rocket-fuel-strength instant coffee as a part of a payment for a job. But there were only so many frogs that a kid could consume.

In the beginning, he’d tried to give the kid a crumbly corner of the ration bar, which the kid had responded to as if he was a fine lady who’d been handed a very dead and very stinky roadkill and asked to eat it.

When Din had blended the ration bar with some water to soften it up, the kid had actually tasted it. Din had been elated for a few precious seconds before the kid had made a face and lowered his ears before spitting out the whole thing.

He’d taken the jar of instant coffee away from the baby and hidden it away, because there was no way that he could handle an overcaffeinated kid which happened to have extremely dangerous magic powers. It just wasn’t an option to have him bouncing all around the ship like a tiny green grenade.

It turned out that the kid would eat the softest meat of a grilled lobster-like insect if Din cut it up extremely small, as well as several live fish when he’d been playing with his friends.

And he would eat endless amounts of soup.

That was something that Din could work with.

“Put lots of bones in it,” was the advice that everyone slung at him, whenever he made any kind of comment about not being sure what kind of food to give to the kid. So, Din had gotten himself some cooking equipment that had probably been a part of someone’s camping stuff once upon a time. He’d practiced by grilling tomatoes over the flame from the burner, to the kid’s delight.

He kept an eye on the kid, who was waving his spoon in the air like a conductor as Din dumped the cut-up spine of a creature he had no name for into the massive soup-pot. He put in the wings and ribs too, letting it all brown for a while as the kid snacked on tiny soft-boiled eggs.

The farmers had left a few sacks of vegetables on his ship without telling him about it, as well as a few lobster-insects and creatures like this one in a large cooler. He’d have liked to thank them, but knew that they would just have made comments about his kid needing lots of food to grow up healthy.

Tearing the animal apart to get every single scrap of meat off should have felt calming, as it was food that would last them a long time, but instead it just made him feel brutal.

He put the meat itself on a separate plate, adding bones until the bottom of the pot was just a pile of them.

It was a relief to take off his helmet, since there was no one around but him and the kid. Feeling the hot air on his face as he chopped up some onions and carrots, Din breathed out slowly.

Whenever he took the helmet off, the kid would make sounds that made Din’s heart do absurd things.

And sure enough, the kid waved at him and giggled.

Din did not suppress his smile, waving back.

Then he put the vegetable scraps into the dented pot, pouring filtered water over all of it. His parents had not put nearly this much turnip into this dish, but he was sure that it wouldn’t turn out so bad.

It was only a matter of letting the broth cook for the next 24 hours, checking on it and adding more water as needed.

The kid watched with interest, drumming on his metal bowl with his spoon. There was not a scrap of egg left in it.

“Making music, are you?” Din asked as the kid experimented with tapping lightly on the bowl with the spoon.

Din kept chopping the rest of his vegetables, sealing them away for later in a bag. There were some herbs somewhere in the back, and they’d have the rest of yesterday’s eggs and grilled tomatoes as side-dishes today.

The broth would last them a long time.

He’d made some kimchi a month back, so there were a few jars of that sitting around. And he’d also found out that the kid liked apricot dumplings as a dessert, they had two of those left if he got very hungry in the afternoon.

Space travel meant that you had to stock things that lasted properly, so there were bags of rice in the pantry and cans of beans and apricots. A bag of flour, a few citrus fruits because scurvy was still something that haunted travelers.

It was only when the kid kept humming loudly that Din realized that he’d been copying him. It had been a long time since Din had hummed anything close to a song.

This one was short and cheerful, like the kid.

“It’s an old song,” Din said, checking on the broth before he started slicing the meat into little cubes and found his only pan, dented as it was. It had definitely been used as a very effective weapon at some point. “Your grandparents liked to sing the whole thing when they were making dinner.”

He fried the meat, shaking his spice containers in the hope that there was something left. While it was cooking, Din sliced the grilled tomatoes into cubes for the kid.

“Tomorrow, there’ll be soup,” Din promised the kid. “With lots of bones in it.”

The kid made happy sounds, banging on the metal bowl with his spoon.

Din spooned the scum of the top of the water in the pot, allowing himself to hum the whole song to the end. He fiddled with the heat settings on the burner, turning it on low before he flipped the meat in his pan.

By the time that the broth had finished cooking and he was adding the leftover meat and fresh vegetables to it so that it would grow up to become soup, he was actually singing the song.


End file.
